1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for preventing passive task-related fatigue of a driver and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a technology causing the driver not to feel passive task-related fatigue by performing an interaction with the driver at a time when the driver is feeling the passive task-related fatigue, thereby promoting safe driving.
In particular, the phrase “an interaction with the driver” means a series of operations viewing quiz data or beat sequence data to the driver, receiving an answer, and visually, acoustically, and tactilely informing a result according to the answer, and a control of each component for the operation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, technologies that prevent drowsy driving by the driver typically sense whether or not the driver is drowsy by analyzing a specific motion of the driver by installing a camera for monitoring the driver within a vehicle. Here, the specific motion includes motions such as a motion that the driver yawns, a motion that the driver abnormally blinks his/her eyes, a motion that the driver frequently nods his/her head, and/or the like. As such, when drowsiness of the driver is identified, an alarm is generally sounded in order to waken the driver or stop the vehicle.
However, these means of alerting the driver are very inefficient because these methods are aimed awakening the driver who is already entered into a drowsy state. As many of us know, once an individual is in a drowsy state it is hard to get out of that drowsiness state. For example, a driver who yawns many times, has an eyelid partly closed, or frequently nods his/her head is likely to continue to perform these actions even after an alarm has been sounded.
Typically, the drowsiness of the driver may be divided into a step of sensing passive task-related fatigue, which is an initial step, a step of entering sleep, and a sleeping step. In this case, the passive task-related fatigue is disclosed in detail in “Driver fatigue: The importance of identifying causal factors of fatigue when considering detection and countermeasure technologies” described in “Transportation Research Part F 12 (2009) 218-224” by Jennifer F. May, Carryl L. Baldwin” which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The steps of entering a sleepy state occurs when the driver yawns many times, has an eyelid partly closed, or frequently nods his/her head, and in this step, it is difficult to arouse the driver from the sleepy state. Therefore, a demand for a technology capable of preventing the passive task-related fatigue which is the initial step of drowsiness in advance, that is, the fatigue generated by only keeping eyes forward without any manipulation by the driver while driving has increased.